


Surana

by Hero_of_Denerim



Series: Welcome to Warden Academy [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Magic, Elven Mage Origin, Gen, Light Angst, Mage Origin, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 16:10:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8759953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hero_of_Denerim/pseuds/Hero_of_Denerim
Summary: A reinterpretation of the Elven Mage Origin.
After passing the final exams, Surana looks forward to pursuing new fields of study. And he would have, if he hadn't agreed to help his friend in his hopeless endeavour.





	

“Jowan!”

Alim jumped up from his chair, looking at the mess at the table. A small coffee puddle spread lazily across his notepad, soaking through his neatly written notes. He grabbed a pack of tissues from his bag, trying to reduce the damage. But the freshly applied ink was already dissolving on half of the pages, and those who weren’t had smudges from his attempt to prevent further spreading.

The other student only grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, ‘Lim,” he said, but didn’t move to help out.

Alim sighed. He had lost time, but if he began to copy his notes immediately, he might piece the unreadable bits together quickly. He didn’t want to start this part over. Again.

Before he sat down, however, Jowan prompted him to look down. “This is just great,” he muttered, as he discovered a coffee stain ruining his pants on his thigh.  He put layers between the wet pages, hoping that would prevent further contamination.

Alim slung his bag over his shoulder and glanced around. Of the few people who were cowering over their own books and notes, none seemed disturbed by his sudden outburst. He turned to leave the library. His new apartment was on the upper floors, but there were still plenty of opportunities to mock the elf with soiled pants. As if being an elven student wasn’t hard enough already.

Feet shuffled over the floor behind him, and he groaned. “Jowan, what do you want?” He didn’t turn around, knowing his friend followed behind him. The thought made him pause briefly. Were they friends? They had been studying together for a while now, partnering on quite a few projects in the subjects they shared. He was majoring in chemistry, and about to finish his final thesis at that, and Jowan, as a biology major, sometimes needed help to double check if his formulas were correct. He was decent enough, Alim supposed, and didn’t comment on his ears or his built as most others did. Maybe, that was enough to call him a friend.

“Just checking on you, you know, after the last set of exams you had to go through. I mean, I was sick, I had to call in sick, I had fever and all, so I don’t know how bad it was. Was it? Bad, I mean?” Jowan always sounded so eager, so excited. Even when he talked about those exams he detested.

“You won’t get the questions from me, as you didn’t last week when the Harrowing took place, Jowan. Try to study for a change.” He pulled his black hair into a ponytail.

“Hahaha. Yes. Sure. I am. Just checking, as I said. No ulterior motives here.”

“Yeah…”

Jowan threw his hands up in frustration. “Okay, fine. They still hadn’t announced the dates on which I can repeat the test, yet, and I’m a bit antsy. Some hints about the questions would be helpful, you know. Just so I know where I should start to prepare.”

“All you need to know is what you worked on during the last years. It’s not that hard, Jowan, just rework your notes or something.” Alim paused, and looked at his friend. “What have you been working on lately, anyway?”

Jowan mumbled evasively, so he shrugged and exited the library. He nodded towards the grim looking security guards posted at the entrance; out of habit by now. They were everywhere in the Circle complex, so he did his best to not get on their bad side. The stories whispered in the dorms after curfew or between the shelves in the library were enough of a cautionary tale.

He called the elevators; the skin at the back of his neck prickled. He knew he had turned his back to the security camera at the upper right corner of the room, monitoring the library exit. Sometimes he wondered if they were real. But then he would see a templar patrol, and he just knew they were. Not that he had anything to fear, he told himself, trying to push down the paranoia at every new camera he discovered, and each new guard he didn’t recognise. He had nothing to hide.

The door to the small cubicle opened, and he stepped inside with Jowan still on his heels. Now that he had passed his Harrowing, he had been granted his own apartment; the privacy of the small studio was a refreshing change from the loud and cramped dorms he had spent his previous time in. And they were closer to the practise areas; when he had spent all his free time in the labs, he was as overjoyed as a still from his finals exhausted student could be, when he could immediately fall into his bed and sleep instead trying to avoid his fellow students.

The Ferelden Circle College only accepted the most gifted, or so his teachers said. His potential had been realised when he was little, and he had lived and studied here since. The memories of his parents were fading by now; they weren’t allowed to visit, so they wouldn’t distract him. Or so he was told. There were others who had also spent most of their lives apart from their families, and they had formed closely-knit groups with the friends they made. He, however, had always been an outcast, teased and mocked, so he stopped his attempts to befriend others.

Instead, he had focussed on his education. He learnt to ignore the insults, and eventually became even motivated by them. One day, he swore himself, he would show them how an elf could surpass them. And now, about to graduate, he was among the best in his subject. Therefore, he was encouraged to stay, and continue his research afterwards; he had accepted gladly. The amount of legal paperwork he had to sign was beyond ridiculous, and he should have been more suspicious in hindsight, but halfway through he had stopped bothering and just signed the documents. Working in this field probably just came with this. So he only needed to hand in his final thesis, and he could begin his work.

The elevator announced its arrival on the apartment floor, and Alim thoughts returned back to the present. He stepped outside, his fingers already fished for his keys in the front pockets of his bag.

“Oh, well. I better start, then.” Jowan knew better than to press further. He only waved sheepishly as the elf exited, and stayed inside the cubicle behind the now closing doors. If he was as resourceful when he was studying as he was when he tried to get around it, he wouldn’t have problems. Jowan wasn’t stupid, only lazy, and a bit scatter-brained. Alim shook his head as he unlocked his flat.

It was rather small, the main room sparsely furnished with a desk, a chair, his coat rack and a small kitchen; his bed and his wardrobe were in the even tinier, adjacent room. But it was his, and he didn’t have to share, so he wouldn’t complain. He put down his bag on his desk, and quickly changed into a lose shirt and his jogging pants, and dumped his worn clothes into the laundry basket in his bathroom. This could wait until tomorrow, he decided.

He returned to his desk, and unpacked his bag, careful to not mess with the neatly aligned boxes, filled with all kind of black pens, sticky notes, and other stationery he needed. Then he examined the damage done.

The additional tissues had absorbed the remaining moisture, so his bad didn’t suffer. At least something. His notes were another matter. Whatever hope he had for them to be magically restored was in vain; the papers were still smudged where he hadn’t cleaned up the coffee fast enough, and were barely readable.

Alim produced his netbook from out of a drawer and switched it on. He always digitised his work, but only at the end of the day; and he had finally structured and written his conclusion today. If he had more than just sketched out the rough outline for the last part, he had a chance to salvage this…

He clicked through his files, until he found the latest document. He skimmed through his text. To the Void! Of course he needed to start over! He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to calm down. All his findings were saved and sorted, he only needed to reorganise them for the final part.

Complaining wouldn’t bring back his notes. Working would.

He stretched his arms and sat down at his desk. It took the rest of the day, a good portion of the night, and a pot filled with coffee, placed at a safe distance from his notepad this time, since he did learn from past mistakes, but he managed to copy the notes he could read, and to reconstruct those he could not. And while drawing conclusions from his experiments wasn’t too difficult for him, writing them out, so that others could understand what he had found was. Not after long, letters began to dance before his tired, burning eyes, and his arms grew as heavy and slow as his mind, but eventually he had reproduced his work from the previous day. In the morning, or around noon he corrected himself, he would add this to his digital files, but for now it would suffice. He yawned, and his whole face stretched with it, and with his feet dragging over the floor, he walked towards his bed. After he had some sleep, he would continue.

 

***

 

He was pleased with his progress. Alim had spent the last weeks in the labs, neglecting his preparations for the final exams in the process, but he had known he would pass them easily, and he could not simply put aside his research.

Working in the labs proved to be more rewarding than the tedious class lessons; always too slow to get through any topic. As he worked on his own on his final thesis, he could fully control speed, effort and direction of his project, and it was just so satisfying. It helped that he had quite an interesting problem to work on, though.

His findings could revolutionise the use of lyrium! As the original substance is rather expensive, since it is monopolised by the government, he was tasked to find ways to make the lyrium they had at their disposal more efficient, and therefore cheaper. When he proposed to synthesise a substitute, his mentors were interested, but not overly encouraging. As long as he delivered in the end, they didn’t particularly care, though if he didn’t… His future was at stake.

Stubborn as he was, he had decided against researching a complimentary substance to cut lyrium. He was convinced that there had to be a substitute for everything, and sometimes, they turned out better than the original. And the mere thought of him being the one to change the course of most likely the most consumed drug in Thedas, motivated him immensely. That would show all those who had disregarded him, mocked him as “a jumped-up knife-ear”. He’d love to see the faces of his fellow students when it would be his work to be honoured! If they hadn’t spent all their energy bullying others, they might have better work to hand in. A satisfied smirk tugged up the corners of his mouth.

Fuelled by these thoughts, he had spent the first weeks meticulously analysing the drug, and its chemical structure. He had noticed quickly enough, that the main properties of lyrium could be mimicked with deep mushrooms; there were popular energy drinks consisting mostly of those fungi, and there was no student in this facility who hadn’t at least once pumped themselves full with them during a period of cramming a subject. He knew he had.

However, only mushrooms wouldn’t do the trick. So he also had analysed the ingredients of those energy drinks. While the thought that he had actually drunk that garbage had made him want to throw up, Alim also found that both deathroot and amrita vein served to amplify the effects of deep mushroom.

He had prepared a variety of samples; seventy-two different combination of different substances, to be exact. If he had to do this, he would do it thoroughly. To replicate a substance as unique as lyrium, the smallest differences could be crucial for the final product.

This amount of substances he needed to test required just as many test subjects. And since he had not been allowed to check his theories directly on humans, mice would suffice. At first, he had pitied them; but this had been the purpose they had been bred in the first place, so he had shrugged off his concerns rather quickly. So he had monitored them for a couple of weeks to gauge the long-term effects, all in comparison to the original substance.

Now, that he went through his notes and reports, he found them horrifying.

Lyrium itself had a bad reputation, with tremendous adverse reactions like dementia and hallucinations. That had been the reason for him to prepare samples with elfroot or embrium mixed into them, so they might not only make it less addictive, but also a safer substance to consume. Unfortunately, each sample infused with soothing substances had no effect at all, neither positive nor negative. The only ones lucky were the mice who had been fed those samples.

Those critters, who had been fed only the mixture of the core ingredients, were not as lucky. While the substances were strong, depending on the respective mixing ration, they were also highly destructive. The mice which had been running around excessively one day, were already withering away the next. Even those treated to lyrium fared better.

And when he stopped feeding them the mixtures, their withdrawal killed them. He had never felt so bad in his entire life.

Of course he was aware that mice reacted way faster than humans to the substances, as their organisms couldn’t nearly take in as much. Still, it wasn’t exactly what he had hoped for. He wanted to research how to combat the lethality, and make it healthier; this would not be achieved within this thesis, he knew, but after he had handed in his paper, we would try to secure the means to do so.

Alim pieced together the different parts, and reorganised them in a single file, before he went over the whole text one last time. The letters started to blur again, as they always did when he focused on them for too long, and he rubbed his eyes irritably. Eventually though, he finished checking his thesis, and send it directly to dean Irving, as well as to Leorah. She was his mentor in this, after all.

He leaned back in his chair and stretched his neck. That was it. Now he would enjoy the free time he would get, however brief that might be.

Alim fished his phone from his bag. Now that he was done with his work, he could return any communication he had put off in the meantime; he just didn’t like to be disturbed, especially when he was in the flow of it.

A message from Jowan showed up on his lock screen, asking him to meet up. He took a quick shower and changed into something less comfortable, but more presentable, before he texted him back and left his apartment.

As he was waiting for the elevator to rush all the way down to the entrance hall, he wondered if Jowan would try to press him for hints on the finals again. Alim smiled. He was in such a good mood, he might even tell him a few questions.

Jowan was already waiting when the doors opened. But he was not alone. Next to him stood a young woman, hardly older than they were. Jowan’s and her fingers were intertwined, holding on to each other as if someone would rip them apart at any moment. Which might as well happen; she wore the uniform of the templar security guards who were stationed throughout the facilities.

Both of them looked at him, with a sheepish smile. Alim crossed his arms in front of his chest as his response, and he glared accusingly enough to have their smiles falter. Good. But he still refused to speak first.

Jowan let out a small sigh, before the hand that wasn’t currently clutching hers ran through his hair.

“Look,” he began, but apparently, he himself didn’t know how to continue.

“I am,” Alim answered eventually; his voice came out colder than he wanted it to, and even though he noticed how Jowan jumped visibly, he did not alter his stance.

“Okay, ‘Lim, you can’t choose whom you fall in love with, right? And I love her!” He let go of her hand, only to put his arm around her shoulders. It would have looked like a protective gesture, if Alim hadn’t been certain that she could harm him more than Jowan ever could. But she only leaned into his touch.

“But she is a templar, Jowan,” he said. This whole situation unnerved him. “Other scientists have disappeared for less, and you know that!”

“I know! That’s why we need your help!”

“My help?” Alim repeated incredulously. He couldn’t trust his ears, there was no way Jowan had asked something like this from him. Helping them, in any way, could severely damage everything he had worked for so far.

“Yes! We’ll leave.”

Alim looked around abruptly. No guards were down here, or not in sight, luckily; he spotted two surveillance cameras, though. They couldn’t discuss something like this out here!

He rapidly pressed the button to call the elevator, and pulled them both inside when it arrived. Every time Jowan tried to say something, Alim cut him off with a crisp gesture of his hand.

What was he even doing? The punishment for not reporting them to the authorities immediately could cost him his career!

Once they had reached his flat, and he had closed the door behind them, he began to talk. “What are you thinking? What do you mean you want to leave?”

Jowan looked down, where his hand tugged at the wristband of his watch. “We can’t be together here. So we will leave.” His voice was barely more than a whisper, and still he sounded resolved.

“You know that this will cost you your jobs, right? And the possibility to ever work in this field again?” As both nodded, he groaned in defeat. “And why do you need my help for that?”

Jowan looked up, his surprise quickly replaced by his typical grin. “You know of these microchips they had implanted into our arms when we got here?” At Alim’s inquisitive look, he added, “When we started studying here? It’s been a long time ago, so no wonder you don’t remember. It came with the initial blood test and- Oh. You came here as a child. Of course you don’t remember. Moving on,” he cleared his throat, “these microchips can be tracked, so that if some researchers would go rogue, or tried to sell their secret, secret findings, they could be swiftly found and returned to the facilities; or so they tell us. They are only desperate to keep research deemed unethical or risky locked up. Anyway, the respective tracking software is somewhere in the basement, rumour has it, and I mean to manipulate the code.”

“And where do I come in?” An uneasy feeling settled in his guts.

“Well, the storage room is locked, and can only be opened with a set of key cards. You got one after you passed your Harrowing, right? Lily got one, too. That way we have the researcher’s key card and the guard’s key card.”

“You need my key card?” He felt his stomach turn over. “But this is retraceable… If I am made responsible-“

“You won’t.” Jowan sounded firm, convinced, even. How could he be so certain about this, but fail to remember the basic elements they had learnt in their introductory classes? How could he possibly trust him in this?

We can disable your chip as well,” Jowan added hesitantly. He didn’t seem surprised when Alim shook his head, though.

“No. I just want to get this over with, and forget this ever happened. We can try it tonight, once,” he emphasised sternly as Jowan’s grin grew wider, “and if we are caught in any way, I will deny to have any part in this.”

This is all I can ask for,” Jowan nodded, and shook Alim’s hand. “Tonight it is.”

Alim watched him turn towards the door, and caught Lily’s small smile at him before she followed her boyfriend.

“And, Jowan,” he called after them, so both froze with their hands at the door handle. “If I’m asked about this, I won’t lie to safe your hide.”

 

***

 

They met in the basement later that evening. With Lily’s insight in the guard rotation, they had set a time window in which they wouldn’t be disturbed. Alim had wrecked his brain to come up with any excuse, warranting him to be down there at that time, just in case, but fortunately, he didn’t need one. Once he exited the elevator, the only other people in the dimly lit hallway were Lily and Jowan. The latter looked up anxiously, and a relieved smile spread over his face when he recognised Alim.

“I feared you’d bail on us,” he said. While his tone was meant to be jokingly, it was nonetheless laced with uncertainty.

“Of course not. Just… Let’s get this over with.” Alim pulled out his key card, his shaking fingers betraying the confidence in his words. He had thought about not showing up, he really had. For a short time, he even had considered reporting them. But somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to do so. Jowan was his friend, and he didn’t wish for him to suffer.

He and Lily nodded to each other, and swiped their cards through the respective scanners. Red lights turned green with a beep, and the sleek metal door glided open. They stepped inside, carefully, and looked around.

The vault wasn’t big, its smooth, metallic walls were free of any decorations. Alim felt uneasy, shifting from one foot onto the other. They really shouldn’t be here; he couldn’t get out of this cell soon enough.

Jowan immediately walked towards the middle of the room, to a massive table. Its legs were seamlessly connected to both the floor and the table surface. On top of it, stood an old, heavy monitor; cables emerged from its back to connect it to the tower-like computer underneath. It was ancient.

He switched it on, and tapped his fingers impatiently on the table as he waited for it to boot up.

“Come on,” he urged it under his breath.

Finally, he browsed through the files. He didn’t bother to sit down for that; instead, he just bended over the table, moving the cursor while clicking his tongue. Somehow, this stressed Alim even more.

“Can you find it?” He struggled to keep his voice level, but his nervousness spiked through, and his voice broke at the end. His gaze flicked from Jowan towards the door, and back. Why was it taking him so long?

“It’s different to what I expected, but… There we go!” He turned around with a triumphant smile, all tension seemingly gone. “Are you sure you don’t want your data deleted, to?”

Before Alim could respond, the door opened again. He froze in terror, as he watched dean Irving enter the small room, accompanied by Greagoir, the head of the local templar security. Behind them, he spotted more men, more templars, waiting just outside. They were trapped.

“I told you, one of yours had taken a part in this.” Irving’s impassioned gaze didn’t leave the three of them. He didn’t look particularly surprised to find them here, but then again, he had always been difficult to read.

Greagoir on the other hand didn’t even try to mask his anger. “You two have been nothing but trouble; a slacker and an arrogant knife-ear… But I had expected more from you, Lily.”

She immediately straightened her back, while Alim felt his ears burn at the slur. When did this go so awry? He looked over to the other two, only to catch Jowan’s disappointed gaze.

“Did you tell on us?” he whispered feebly, as he let his head hang.

“No, he did not,” Irving interjected. “We had our very own suspicions. You were not especially subtle.” He chuckled lightly.

“Enough of this!” Greagoir pursed his lips. “You will follow us upstairs to the dean’s office, where we will discuss the consequences of your… actions.” He turned around to step outside of the room, immediately issuing orders to the templars waiting there. “Escort them up-“

“No!”

All heads whipped around at Jowan’s outcry. Alim had never seen him like this before. He was shaking, both hands stuffed into his jacket, and he slowly lifted his gaze from the ground. The unnatural fury burning in his eyes was frightening, it twisted his whole face into a grimace of anger. With another scream, he pulled out one hand, now clutching a vial.

“Go back,” he screetched, voice pitching as he threw his hand forward. “Go back or you’ll regret it! I- I swear!”

Only when he looked over to Lily, and saw the horror in her eyes, he hesitated.

“What have you done?” she murmured, tears now running over her cheeks.

That was enough to drive Jowan over the edge. He smashed the flask onto the ground, and stared at the guards that had entered the room. After a few seconds, they began to cough, and visibly struggle to breathe. And, then, they dropped onto the ground.

With not a second to waste, Jowan leapt over them, and Alim saw how the remaining templars in the hallway instinctively backed away from him. He rushed through and disappeared into an elevator.

Everyone was paralysed for a moment, trying to understand what had just happened. Greagoir was the first to shake off the stasis. Even with his back turned to him, Alim could tell he was outraged. “Into the office! Now!”

 

***

 

Lily stood the whole time, head hanging down, as Greagoir lectured her. She wordlessly accepted her fate, as he fired her, still not meeting his gaze. Alim saw tears glitter in her eyes when she slunk out of the room.

“And now you.”

The cold voice had him focus back on Greagoir. He gripped the sides of the chair he sat on, until his knuckles turned white. So, that was it. The head of security walked around him, hands clasped firmly behind his back, while Irving watched him over the rim of his glasses from behind his desk.

“After I had heard the premise of your thesis, I had almost hoped you would turn out to be reasonable, Surana. That you understood where you belonged.”

Alim bit his lip, he knew this wasn’t the right moment to discuss it, but the words were out of him before he could stop himself. “Well, I’ve found some complications, which you should be aware of, otherwise it might cause more harm then-“

“Nonsense,” Greagoir cut him off. “But this is not why you are here. You are here because you broke the rules; did you think they didn’t apply to you, as well?”

“I… What? No!” deep down, he knew his protests wouldn’t be heard. But he had to try. “I only…” His words died on his tongue.

As expected, Greagoir ignored his objections. “And instead, you decided to not only flee the facilities, violating multiple rules and contracts in the process, but also to help this terrorist to develop biological weaponry!”

“Now, Greagoir, I think you have scared him quite enough. He did not follow Jowan, and as far as I checked, he did not manipulate his own tracking code.”

The other man shot him an angry glare. “And yet he helped them. We can’t know how much he was involved in all of this, or if this was all they had planned. And I won’t allow you to protect a potential threat to the institution!” He stopped his pacing, to study a trinket on Irving’s desk. Calmer, he added, “We still have some vacant tranquillity cells.”

Cold shivers ran down his spine. Alim had thought those cells were only rumours. As were the tales about vanished researchers who turned up insane, or worse, completely indifferent, after having been missed for months. If they showed up at all.

A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. Greagoir gruffly called them inside. A dark-skinned man entered, his thick, dark hair neatly groomed and styled into a ponytail. He nodded towards them, and smiled at Alim.

“You again,” Greagoir sighed.

Alim looked up, now confused. He hadn’t seen the other man before at the Circle, but he in turn seemed familiar with both Greagoir and the dean.

“As you can see, Duncan, we are quite busy at the moment; if this is still something about that girl, I’m afraid I have to ask you to wait until later.”

“No, everything about this matter is sorted. But before I left, I wanted to check on someone else.” Duncan now pointedly looked at Alim.

“Me?” he asked hesitantly, after the others didn’t react.

“Yes. I’ve read your paper, or skimmed over it, more like, and I-“

“How did you get your hands on confidential documents?” Greagoir interrupted him harshly, forcing the words out between his teeth he had tightly pressed together.

“I took the liberty to forward the thesis to him, Greagoir,” Irving answered nonchalantly. Without difficulty, he held the other man’s furious gaze.

“He did,” Duncan confirmed. “And I saw lots of potential in it. Potential I cannot allow to go to waste in some cell.” He smiled again at Alim, who had a hard time following the conversation. The stranger, no, Duncan, had read his paper? He looked from him to Greagoir, now locked into a silent battle of glares, and then to Irving, who watched it as well, with a small smile playing around his lips.

Eventually, Greagoir was the first to break the gaze, and scoffed indignantly. “Is there another student you want to keep from being punished, as they deserve to be,” he added pointedly, “or is that enough for one visit, Duncan?”

“Only if he is willing to come with me,” Duncan answered, and turned fully to Alim. “If you want to continue your research, and even improve it, I hereby offer you a place at Warden Academy, where you can do so. Without the surveillance and restrictions other institutions might impose on you.” Greagoir grimaced at this jab, but stayed silent.

Alim only stared at Duncan; his jaw had dropped a little, and a tiny voice inside his head mocked him that he’d certainly look moronic, but he didn’t care. “Without strings attached?” he finally forced out, still star-struck by the sudden offer.

Duncan smiled kindly. “Well, we expect you to work hard. but judging from your previous academic work, I trust that you will.”

“How could I say no, then?” Everything turned out for the better, for once. And Alim could still show his worth.

**Author's Note:**

> No I haven't abandoned my little series; but I felt I needed to take a break from this fic, as I was stuck at some point. ~~Do you know the feeling when you write and you think, _I will edit this later, I don't need to write it out now_? Well, past-me is this kind of a dick. Thanks for nothing, past-me.~~
> 
> Anyway, here is the first Mage Origin, the one that is more related to the actual questline in the game; I have lined out the other Mage Origin as well, and I hope I will be able to upload that one, soon! In the meantime, thank you for reading; I hope you enjoyed this little story :)
> 
> If you did, feel free to leave kudos or nice comments, because this seriously makes my day every time!


End file.
